T he process of relocating people from New Orleans should start immediately as the city has reached a “point of no return” that will see it surrounded by the ocean within decades due to the climate crisis , a stark new study has concluded. Ongoing sea level rise and the rampant erosion of wetlands in southern Louisiana will swallow up the New Orleans area within a few generations, with the new paper estimating the city “may well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century”. Low-lying southern Louisiana faces multiple threats, with rising sea levels driven by global heating, compounded by strengthening hurricanes, also a feature of the climate crisis, and the gradual subsidence of a coastline that has been carved apart by the oil and gas industry.…